


something rich and strange

by Blanchette (Guinevak)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Merpeople, Obligatory Merman In A Bathtub, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24517531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guinevak/pseuds/Blanchette
Summary: Matthias takes in a wayfarer from the storm.
Relationships: Lighthouse Keeper/Merman Whose Life He Saved, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21
Collections: Original Characters & Original Works Flash Exchange May 2020





	something rich and strange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greygerbil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/gifts).



_The light tricked me,_ says the merman.

He’s lying back in the old copper bathtub, body gleaming dully in the firelight, the colors of pewter and old bronze. His head is tilted back against the rim, eyes closed. Like this there’s a sort of dreamlike beauty about him, battered and ungainly creature though he is. Matthias’s eyes keep straying back to him.

 _The light?_ he asks.

_Your light. I thought it must be the moon rising._

Matthias found him lying shapeless on the sand, like a dead thing cast up from the depths by the violence of the storm. Nearly cast up his breakfast in turn, when what he’d taken for flotsam began to writhe, feebly, under his watching eyes. It was when he saw the dense short pelt like a seal’s, and caught the bitter whiff of blood, that he pitied the creature enough to go closer.

He’s not unlike a seal, the merman. Nothing like the mermaids sailors boast of, all glittering scales and streaming hair. He’s built sleek and streamlined, no obvious waist where his upper body flows seamlessly into a tail more like a porpoise’s than a fish. Warm, supple skin under his close-growing fur. Eyes like black pearls in a broad, almost human face; a hoarse, almost human voice that murmurs, _The light tricked me, and the pain blinded me, and I lost my way in the storm. Beached. I thought I was burning._

 _It’s not a trick,_ Matthias says. He thinks of moths, wheeling frantically round a flame. _The light. It’s meant to be a guide._

_For men._

He rises from his chair, leaning over to check the wound. It’s an ugly ragged scrape either side of the merman’s rounded shoulder, the bite of a shark or something similar. The healing flesh is a leaden purple; probably it will scar.

A soft splash. Dark fingers cover his, the webs between them translucent, like sea glass.

 _It’s all right,_ the merman says, and Matthias isn’t sure he’s talking about the wound, but he settles a palm lightly against his shoulder, all the same. The merman never smiles - perhaps can’t, perhaps his face isn’t made that way - but the firelight is warm in his pearly eyes as he tilts his head back again.


End file.
